Word: ky
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...government cordon was nearly closed. Ky's marines, backed by tanks and a squadron of armored personnel carriers, each armed with a .50-cal. and two .30-cal. machine guns, ringed the rebel command post, the faded yellow-stucco Tinh Hoi Buddhist pagoda. Six blocks away, the foreign press, mostly American, was taking a breather on the cement terrace of the Press Center overlooking the Danang River...
...early evening in Danang, a city blasted and weary of civil war. For eight days the six battalions of loyal Vietnamese troops dispatched from Saigon by Premier Nguyen Cao Ky had been closing the vise, block by block, street by street, on 800 rebellious soldiers in the military capital. Shattered trees, some completely sawed off by gunfire, lined Danang's bullet-spattered boulevards. Pocked walls, splintered doors and decapitated houses testified to the city's agony, in which over 80 had died and more than 400 were wounded...
...Several times we asked when the announcement would come. A Buddhist Boy Scout told us in broken English to wait another five minutes. A man in a green uniform blandly assured us that it would deal with the reasons for the rebel fight against the Ky government. That hardly seemed worth summoning us to the pagoda, and it suddenly occurred to us that it might very well be a trap. If the rebels feared a government attack on Tinh Hoi, what better way to forestall it than by arranging the presence of three dozen foreign reporters inside the pagoda...
...probably hastened by the newsmen's harrowing experience the night before. If the Buddhist-inspired rebels had been planning a last-ditch stand in the pagoda, they would have done so only if they could have been certain that the press -and world opinion-would blame the Ky forces, and not themselves. When the reporters departed, so did the Buddhists' will to fight...
...Premier Ky, victory in Danang was a significant strike toward stability but hardly the end of his troubles. "Certainly the Ky government is stronger today than it was two weeks ago," said one Saigon expert, "but two weeks from now? It is a rash, rash man who would try to predict." For one thing, Buddhist Political Leader Thich Tri Quang was still in Hué, South Viet Nam's capital of discontent, which was in rebel hands...